Vol 10. Edition 5
News from CannaTown
Page 11
Cannatown Science
CARPENTER ACCIDENTALLY BECOMES EXPERT PHYSICIST
In high school shop class, Frank Donners oen got high marks for acciden- tal demonstration of subatomic principles such as gravity and polarity, through many falls and egregious misuse of large magnets. So it wasn’t com- pletely surprising that the 34-year-old Bowlington man accidentally stumbled onto a major breakthrough in the study of light and electromagnetic waves, when, on a random whim, he gured out how to stop light beams in their tracks
Frank Donners, far right, has made a breakthrough in the eld of subatomic physics.
while sitting at his own garage workbench. Even more interesting, the woodworker- cum-physicist was able to accomplish the feat with a mediocre 6-foot 2x4. “ e light is completely reduced to a shadow, we believe, due to the opacity of the wood,” he announced to peers in the science community via nonviral video last week. Donner says he was chee ng in his garage laboratory when he came across the strange behavior of certain light waves. “It was if they were suspended in beams, coming from my window, and in these beams I could see the actual oating light particles, especially moreso when I kicked up a bunch of sawdust into it.” It was aer a few piles of sawdust that he suddenly had an epiphany. Following his recovery from a terrible coughing spell, Don- ners managed to snag a nearby framing stud and axed it to the workbench barclamp. en, he sat back to observe the magic. Sure enough, the light, acting as a particle, could not bend, and was totally blocked by the lum- ber, creating a dark shadow on the ground. It was, appropriately, a ground-breaking moment.
“Matilda!” he yelled to his wife, over and over, until the whole family came to observe the phenomenon. e discovery, which brought him acclaim and series of research grants, is now cata- logued in his forthcoming book, “ e Block of Light,” which immediately skyrocketed to the top 349,617 on Amazon. Donners, a self-taught carpenter by trade, learned much of what he knows from studying social media outlets and his own intuition. Always drawn to the mysteries of the quantum universe, he is best known among friends for "feats of science," such as "freezing light" by shining a ashlight into an ice-cube tray, and on one occasion, "holding a light particle" suspended in space, between two chopsticks while at the local Chinese bu et. Now, energized by his own momen- tum and growing recognition, Donners plans several successive experiments, such as testing whether a groundhog could see its shadow on Groundhog’s Day, by studying his ability to see his own shadow. "I think we all can agree there's gonna be a shadow," he says. " e question that haunts me, is why ?
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